Visualizing Memory in Architecture

Chicago-based artist Lincoln Schatz has been drawing attention with his large-scale generative art installations that visualize memory. The artist has recently been commissioned by Dallas developer Billingsley Company to create one of the largest new media works ever installed in a public space. Due to open on March 29, Schatz’s Collision of Memory will be a permanent installation that flanks each side of the entrance to the elevator area of One Arts Plaza, a $125 million multiuse structure, the first of four residential and office buildings on over 10 acres at the eastern edge of the Dallas Arts District. From that moment onwards, two high definition cameras will record the edifice’s lobby activity, on a daily basis, during a minimum of 8 years. Selected according to specific chance operations, segments of the footage will be displayed on two 9 x 9 foot video walls in four overlapping layers: one from the last two minutes and three from a distant time period. While standing between the two screens, viewers will see themselves along with visual memories of that place.

Continuously washing over one another in painterly portraits of individuals and the surrounding environment, these images relate past and present in uncanny ways, creating a non-linear impression of history.